This, like several other pictures throughout this album, was taken in Verdi Square – tiny little park bounded by Broadway on the west, Amsterdam Ave on the east, and 72/73rd street on the north/south.

As noted in a previous picture, the young woman who was supervising this young boy and his brother plunked herself down on an unoccupied stone bench, and tossed out a couple of crumbled-up crackers to attract some of the nearby pigeons. The pigeons did indeed flock around, which the curly-haired blond boy thought quite entertaining… at one point, he gestured to the babysitter so she could see the pigeons that were in mid-flight…

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This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan — between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don’t like to intrude on people’s privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they’re still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what’s right in front of me.

I’ve also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting — literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I’ve learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture … after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it’s pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

For the most part, I’ve deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, drunks, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don’t want to be photographed, and I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of them. I’m still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We’ll see how it goes …

The only other thing I’ve noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They’re probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I’ve photographed … but there was just nothing memorable about them.

Image by Ed Yourdon
As the elderly woman in the previous picture was crossing Broadway (at 104th Street) to the east, this young woman and her sexy little dog were crossing in the other direction. The dog was in quite a hurry, dragging his owner along a little faster than she really wanted to walk…

Moving into 2012, the photo was published in a Jun 17, 2012 EventsToday blog, with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written on this Flickr page. It was also published as an illustration in the Sep 26, 2012 Jokes of the Day blog.

This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan — between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don’t like to intrude on people’s privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they’re still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what’s right in front of me.

I’ve also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting — literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I’ve learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture … after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it’s pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

For the most part, I’ve deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don’t want to be photographed, and I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of them. I’m still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We’ll see how it goes …

The only other thing I’ve noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, *far* more people who are *not* so interesting. They’re probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I’ve photographed … but there was just nothing memorable about them.

Image by Todd Barnard
Ha! I didn’t have to add any animals to this one.

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Context is the killer application for mobile

We live in a world of diverse mobile devices. Laptops, smartphones and everything in between define the mobile experience of the 21st century. But what is the killer application for mobile computing? We all know the theory of killer apps — they’re the reason and the purpose people invest in new devices. The killer app in the early days of PCs was the VisiCalc spreadsheet. PageMaker and the creation of desktop publishing were the killer apps for the GUI-based PC, most notably the Macintosh. But for mobile, it’s not as clear; some people think the killer app for mobile is email, while other say it’s the mobile web. Personally, I don’t think there’s one specific killer application — I think the killer app for mobile is simply context.

Historically, we’ve tailored the devices we use to the places where we are. We distinguished between business users and consumer users because the functionally required was often tied to the location the user was sitting. Mobility was often dead space. People found ways to distract themselves during travel time, and were generally disconnected when out and about. Today, the mobile space is connected, and that makes it quite unique: it’s neither home or work, work nor play. Your context shifts rapidly depending on what you’re doing, where you are, and what devices or devices you may be carrying — in our age of digital ubiquity, you can access the relevant information, either personal or professional, wherever you are, on whatever screen you choose. Delivering the contextual information users need, when they need it, is what’s critical — not any particular application or service.

Context contradicts conventional wisdom. For one thing, feeds and speeds are no longer the defining metrics for value. The fastest and most powerful laptop won’t do much for a user on the road if it weighs 10 pounds and gets barely an hour of battery life — or can’t open in a coach seat on a plane. By contrast, the ability to check email, browse the web or listen to music doesn’t matter if your phone won’t make a call when you need it to. Smart vendors will learn technology applied to context for users is what matters — especially since I think there’s an upper limit on the number of devices most people will carry with them at any given time. As I’ve said in the past, for most of us that’s two, with a maximum of three.

It’s time to be liberated and connected. The dream is real — now it’s time to see more devices execute and deliver the vision.

Image by labanex
Greyhound bus making a right towards the Greyhound bus station somewhere on Main Street.

I had to wait seven damn hours for my connecting bus to Los Angeles, so I just walked around and took pictures all night. I did not have enough memory on my camera (256MB only) and my laptop with a built-in card reader battery was low, so I could not download the pictures I’d already taken.

This is the setup I did for my show at fri-son (Fribourg) in march.
There were 2 obvious parts. For the first part, pretty much improvised, I used the 2 channels on the left and made drones with the guitar, distortion and loop pedals. The second channel has a granulator delay.

I write midi sequences in advance but I use two midi effects (random and velocity) which affect the sequences in real-time.
Yellow clips are empty, their labels remind me I have to change the tempo or switch on an effect.
I organize clips by color (green, blue, red, a color for each track). The label sometimes correspond to a preset. I’m using midi controllers but if there are two many parameters to change I prefer using presets I’ve saved.
I do not necessarily play clips in the planned order, I could decide to go back to a previous clip that would anyway sound different because I changed some effects’ parameters.

Some remarks :
I switched from Live 5 to Live 7 but I haven’t yet used the Rack feature which could be very useful.
I’m using a 3-year old Powerbook that can’t run all instruments and effects at the same time. Battery + Ohmicide take more than 50% of my CPU and I’m only using half of Ohmicide’s distortion channels, otherwise it’d just kill my laptop. So during a set I have to switch on/off instruments and effects, and I remove channels as soon as I don’t need them anymore… That’s not very convenient.

apple macbook airhead

Image by brandon shigeta
f*ck, this new mb is dumb as sh*t!!!! i was totally ready to drop 3gs on the slim, but after watching the release, what a p.o.s.! funny how they said they didn’t compromise on features, but let’s see…
no expresscard slot- and i just bought all those damn cards! and expandability would have been much better over usb.
no internal drive (well maybe i can live without it)
no 128gb- i gotta admit 64 is pretty amazing for 1/8" drive, but still, that’s a downgrade from my current lappy. and running off an ipod drive sounds like an f’n joke.
no firewire- f*ck!!!!! this thing should be placed under the macbook in the line up
no removable battery- well i guess i never did buy an extra one for my 17, 15, 3400, lombart, but still.
no internal ethernet- so after you get all those extra adapters, are you really saving space/weight???

i don’t know why they compared it to the sony t series, which completely blows it away. not forgetting to mention that that laptop has been around for years. can we please have a real 13.3" mbp?